Light And Color.

Light and color are an important part of the joys we find in life. It is no surprise we don’t have any trouble talking about that. At the same time there is a lot of mystery about those elements in our lives that we don’t think about. Since the dawn of man they have fascinated us. Many humans have found them a source and a basis for worship.

Man has studied them since they first began looking up. Over the centuries they have been the subject of human study. These days, our scientists are have offered some ideas they believe in for our consideration.

They say light is an expression of energy. That seems obvious. They also think that light takes the form of waves or particles called photons. That may be new to us.

 They tell us light can be considered to travel in waves. In the world of quantum physics scientists have determined that light can also travel as particles. Indeed, it is claimed that light can be both at the same time.

Once we are talking about colors, it is more helpful to talk about light as waves. Scientists believe they have proved that the different visible colors travel at various wavelengths. Light, they say, can travel at various wavelengths and colors vary by their wavelength.

What is a wavelength? They are one way the energy of light can be expressed and they are very short. They are measured in nanometers. A nanometer is one hundred thousandth of a meter.

Scientists tell us that blue light has the shortest wavelength, measuring between 400 and 500 nm. Violet has the shortest. They say red light wavelengths are between 650 and 780nm, having the longest of the primary colors.

We mentioned visible colors because, they tell us, there are colors that we don’t see because our eyes cannot discern them. Our eyes are not sensible to the wavelengths in which they are expressed. Examples of these are infra-red and ultra-violet. We also cannot see blue-green and red-yellow because they are opposites and cancel each other out.

So how about rainbows? And how we see them through prisms? They say we see rainbows because white light get broken up into its component colors because of refraction and dispersion. What does that mean? When light passes through another material, i.e. raindrops or prism glass, the white light breaks into its component parts based on the different speeds each color has, when it passes through the medium,   depending on their individual wavelengths.

 (Don’t ask me questions, because I don’t understand that much about this stuff.)

 Another thing that I don’t understand is that energy is also considered to have mass. If light can be a particle then it must have mass even if each photon is very tiny. Of course there are an enormous number of photons necessary to give us we can see.

That means light and energy are a part of the mass that makes up the cosmos. Those masses went into creating suns and the planets around them that make up our planetary system, our galaxies, our universe. Including the particular system one we inhabit.

Should I also mention that light travels at 196,000 miles per second?

Ever watch the shifting colors of aurora borealis in northern climates?

I don’t understand much about those things either.

People who are colorblind are just like us but have a more limited capacity to discern some color wavelengths.

There is so much about our physical world to which we don’t give much thought. When we begin to think about them, it quickly becomes really complicated.

There are a lot of very smart people thinking about those things for a good part of their lives. They help us make sense of some of the physical things about our world that are important to us.

Like light and color!

“Reaching Out Of Sight”*

Humanity’s best is the reaching out of sight.

Humanity’s best is the reaching out for light,                                   

  Beyond reasoning, beyond wearying, searching for the bright.                                 

                                                                                      

Probing unknown secrets in the darkness without fright,                               Attacking with all energies, fears there, yet, in spite,            

Braving strife, opposing might, seeking clearer sight.

Hunger for believing one path will yield the right,               

 Spending human lifetimes seeking always-brighter light,                           

Searching ever for the secrets that will light the coming night.

 

 Elements within us, reaching way beyond our height,        

Nature seeking heroes to be everything we might.

Human’s nature in us, reaching ever out of sight.                                                  

*MMR(10/2024), with apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning